Professor John Paul Russo, of the University of Miami 's Department of English, will be honored Tuesday, Jan. 23, at the WSU Academy of Scholar's Bonner Award/Symposium. In the spirit of former WSU President Thomas Bonner's career as an educator as well as a renowned historian of medicine and medical education, the prize recognizes the best recent book in English on the theory and practice of the liberal arts. In view of Bonner's own work, special consideration is given to studies bridging the “two cultures” of the sciences and the humanities.

Dr. Russo is acting chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Miami, Fla. He has published “Alexander Pope: Tradition and Identity” and “I.A. Richards: His Life and Work” as well as essays in cultural and ethnic studies, poetics and the history of literary theory and criticism, with particular attention to the relations among the humanities and the sciences.

Russo received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships to Italy, where he has taught at the universities of Palermo, Rome, Salerno and Genoa. In 1986, the city of Gela presented him with a medal for his contribution to cultural relations between Italy and the United States. He is co-editor and book review editor of Italian Americana and a member of the board of the American Italian Historical Association. In 1992, he was the recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award from the University of Miami. He is currently completing a two-volume manuscript, co-written with Robert Casillo, entitled “The Italian in Modernity” on the representations of Italy, Italians and Italian Americans.